When she saw our baboon she yelled "fire," and
the officers of the boat pulled him out by the hind leg, and tore my
pant leg off. Pa and I had to sit up the rest of the night with him, and
when we landed him with the show at Madison Square Garden we felt
relieved.
[Illustration: When She Saw the Baboon She Yelled Fire.]
One woman on the boat has followed us ever since to collect damages from
pa, 'cause his oldest son, the monk, proposed to her. Gee, it seems to
me a woman ought to know the difference between a baboon and a man, but
some women will marry anything that wears clothes.
The monk took to me so, Pa said I must teach him everything I could that
men do, so I thought it would do no harm to teach him to chew tobacco,
'cause he could already smoke cigarettes, so I borrowed a chew from the
boss canvasman, a great big chew of black plug tobacco, and the monk
grabbed it, and chewed it awhile, just before the afternoon performance,
and swallowed it. I knew that settled the monk, and when the audience
came along by his cage, and pa was trying to get him to perform, as he
did at Newport, eating dinner like a man, the monk turned pale, and his
stomach ached, and he stood on his head, and held his stomach in both
hands, and kicked the table over.
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